30: Mike Young | Sponsored by SimpliFaster
This week’s guest is Dr. Mike Young. Mike is the owner of Athletic Lab in Cary, NC. Mike is also the founder of the website www.elitetrack.com, which for young coaches like me was an extremely valuable resource in learning more about the sport, as well as various training programs. In 2010, I coached a national champion in the 55m dash using workouts I derived largely from Josh Hurlebaus’ training log on the Elitetrack forums. Mike has been a contributor to Just Fly Sports in the past, and one of the things that Mike has that is in rare demand is an experience in biomechanics, track and field, team sport, strength and conditioning, and technology use. This combination makes him a great expert on all things speed and force application. Today, we are going to cover lots of biomechanical topics on speed development, comparing and contrasting track to team sport. We also get into some special strength topics, such as the role of bar speed measurement in the weight room, as well as Mike’s use of the kBox in developing specific strength for jumpers and sprinters. If you coach speed and are interested in the fine points of cueing and exercise selection, then you’ll find this episode particularly fascinating. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Key Points: Ideals on coaching acceleration in team sport vs. track and field Internal vs. external cueing in speed and acceleration building Cueing posterior pelvic tilt and speed Coaching (or not coaching) frontside mechanics in sprinting Technology used in speed and agility training Bar speed as a KPI metric (or not) Mike’s thoughts on the kBox Quotes: “The basics of acceleration mechanics are the same (between track and team sports), the physics don’t lie, we accelerate the same whether we’re on a soccer pitch or basketball court. The only difference is if whether we’re in these really low starting positions and have spikes on that might change our starting angles, and whether we have to deal with various starting positions, so side facing, coming off a backpedal, coming off a small jog, that kind of thing” “In most sports, you’re never going to be in those crouched positions, the 3 point or 4 point start” “(In team sport) we’re accelerating to a visual/auditory/personnel stimulus on the field or court. That’s totally different than what we might see in track. Everything in track is a very discrete task, we know exactly what is going to happen…. That’s not the case with field and team sports, I try to introduce that element, making the start a little unpredictable, with various starting positions responding to a clap, or a ball, or other players positioning” “Most of the time, I’m going to be using external cueing for both track and team sports” “The only time you might want to use internal over external cueing is if you want to get a very specific muscle activation” “The orientation of the lumbo-pelvic hip complex has a profound effect on what the leg is able to do with respect to the ground” “With volitional posterior pelvic tilt (as compared to normal) we saw that at the same running velocities on the treadmill, the stride lengths were 2” longer… I’ve since seen very similar things counting steps in a fly zone manipulating pelvic tilt” “Sprinting is such a fast movement, the more we can make it a hind-brain activity, the better the athlete is going to be” “I have found a fairly clear relationship between postural alignment and sprint speed and if you don’t have postural alignment correct, particularly the pelvis, you're not going to sprint correctly, doesn’t matter how much you cue the limbs, if the lumbo-pelvic complex is not oriented correctly, it’s not going to work” “When we ask an athlete in a team field court sport to basi...
